Strange Fear

As I was coming home from an errand mid afternoon yesterday, walking up the courtyard I was stricken with an odd sense of panic. A woman was fast approaching from behind, draped in a yellow jacket, hood covering her face. Her feet clopped. The particular tonal quality of the clopped drove this panic through the roof and I hustled to the front entrance to the stairwell. She was still coming fast from behind. I fumbled with the keys, got in, and hurried up one small flight of stairs and fumbled once again to get into my unit. My stomach crunched as I feared for sure she would come up behind me. I got into the unit, slammed the bolt shut. And laughed very hard at the whole thing. I looked out my front window, into the courtyard. She wasn't there. Didn't hear her going into the front door of my end of the courtyard. She must have veered off to one of the side sections. Phew. For some reason the intensity of her speed coupled with the clop of her feet shuddered me with sudden dread. It was an odd experience. Don't think I've really felt anything like that. Am I coming down the agoraphobia? I hear it's going around.

On another note the rush of the close brush with panic carried over into good energy as I pumped out a 10 pg short story from an idea I had stewing from the other day. I'm excited about this piece. I celebrated in the evening my checking out "Antichrist" finally. Beautiful and terrifying. It's been awhile since I've seen a film on the screen so artfully shot, in cinematic language of its own. It definitely had some visceral moments which made crawl out of my skin. I'm glad I didn't bring my girlfriend, she had a hard enough time watching Agent Cooper pull a paper sliver of a letter from underneath Laura Palmer's fingernail in "Twin Peaks." I very much liked "Dogville" by Lars Von Trier too. What a guy.